Google looks intent on breaking the business of the internet, and AI won't fix it

SoftwareAIGoogle looks intent on breaking the business of the internet, and AI won’t fix itWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Google)

Google Search homepage with the Google logo and search bar.

Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor(Image credit: Future)This week I’ve been:visiting my home country of Wales in the metaverse. Oh, with all this AI stuff you forgot about the metaverse, huh?

Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor

(Image credit: Future)This week I’ve been:visiting my home country of Wales in the metaverse. Oh, with all this AI stuff you forgot about the metaverse, huh?

(Image credit: Future)

Jacob Ridley portrait on a blue background

This week I’ve been:visiting my home country of Wales in the metaverse. Oh, with all this AI stuff you forgot about the metaverse, huh?

Google unveiled many new features coming to Google Search atGoogle I/Othis week, the most notable beingAI Overviews. These are designed to answer user’s queries quicker: You type or speak a query into Google search, Google finds an answer, and generates a response. Right there on the page.

“Google will do the Googling for you,” says Liz Reid, Google’s head of Search.

Google’s AI model, Gemini, is the key. It’s banking on using the world’s most elaborate and extensive library of information to provide these answers to its users: Us.

Google acts as a gatekeeper of the internet not only because it provides us with directions on where to go to retrieve information, but it also serves a high number of advertisements. The money from which goes into the pockets of publishers, which, in turn, ends up paying for more content. A rosy look at the fraught and varied business of publishing, I’ll admit, but that’s generally how this works. Sprinkle on some cash flow from affiliate marketing and you have the earnings report of plenty of non-ecommerce websites.

So, what happens when the publisher receives fewer page views on its content? The stakes grow higher, the money to invest lowers, the ads grow worse, and the content becomes more desperate to attract visitors. The ‘enshitification’ of the internet, ultimately, is a monetary issue.

And Google gets a say in all of it. It sits at the centre of the internet, whether you use its services often or not. That’s become a problem in various ways over the years, as the company looks to find new ways to serve information and make money through its index of the internet, Search.

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(Image credit: Google)

Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, at Google I/O

With the advent of Google’s AI-powered search, we might be about to find out what happens when Google diminishes a publisher’s ability to secure suitable revenue. And the results are unlikely to be pretty.

Google suggests it will begin rolling out AI Overviews only where it sees the most benefit from it being used. Though there’s nothing explicitly preventing a gradual expansion into the more of the traditional search engine.

Going off Google’s previous form and refusals to pay back publishers, it’s easy to see why many are worried. The New York Times has published an article titled “Can Google Give A.I. Answers Without Breaking the Web?” TheNYT is currently engaged in a lawsuit against OpenAIover the use of its articles to train chatbots.

Publishers are right to be spooked about Google’s plans to incorporate AI into its search results, @kevinroose writes. “The grand bargain on which Google’s relationship with the open web rests — you give us articles, we give you traffic — could fall apart.”https://t.co/Lhgx1dt4lLMay 14, 2024

Similarly, Google’s CEO has been questioned on whether the company is interested inOpenAI’s use of YouTube videos to train its competing models. I’d be surprised if Google wants to fight that battle, considering its own positioning in AI.

(Image credit: Google)

AI Overview feature as shown by Google.

Though Google should be challenged for what it’s doing. Not the least bit because it seemingly flies in the face of Google’s own recommendations for how to make good content. As the company with the keys to the internet, publishers have long been stuck listening to Google’s advice on how to get seen on its platform. It recommends creators follow four guiding principles:E-E-A-T.

E for experience, E for expertise, A for authoritativeness, T for trustworthiness.

How long can these be achieved with fewer readers, fewer views, less money and an AI leaning over and copying everyone’s answers for Google’s own gain? It might work, for a while, then the money seeps away and the content is inevitably worse off. At what point does the diminishing of original content lead to a dreadful user experience with Google’s Search AI spitting out incorrect responses? Some would argue it’s already pretty poor and doing that today.

it’s very impressive how the obnoxious Google AI thing at the top of all search results now is unconditionally wrong at interpreting what the question was while also delivering new, entirely wrong answers to the question it made upMay 15, 2024

Oh my god. Out of the 19 answers that google’s AI search provided, 17 of them are just blatantly incorrect. This is worse than useless. pic.twitter.com/O6fHMPPhTwMay 15, 2024

Why should Google gain from the hard-work of others for a system that is becoming more and more stacked against the actual content creators? I’d love to know.

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